


Stories In The End

by chicafrom3



Category: Ondine (2009)
Genre: F/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Selkies, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicafrom3/pseuds/chicafrom3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You said you died, in the water. How many lives do you have?"<br/>"For you? I can't count."</p><p>The story of Ondine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories In The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/gifts).



> I'm not sure this is exactly what you were looking for, but your prompt grabbed me and wouldn't let go until I wrote this. Happy Yuletide, and I hope you enjoy this!

Here is a story:

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Ioana, who is the hero of this story.

She lost control of her life to a man called Vladic who threatened her, who threatened people she loved, who manipulated her, who frightened her. He's the villain. It couldn't be clearer if he was twirling a mustache and tying girls to train tracks.

One day Ioana and Vladic were in a boat, and the Coast Guard -- the knights in shining armor -- were closing in on them. So that they would not have any evidence against him, Vladic gave Ioana all of his ill-gotten goods, a backpack full of heroin, and threw her overboard with orders to swim.

She swam.

She swam until she could swim no more, and then she floated, and then she sank.

She drowned in the Irish Sea.

This isn't a fairytale.

That's where Ioana's story ends, but it's not where Ondine's story begins.

\---

Here is another story:

Once upon a time there was a man called Circus, because he was a clown and a fool. He drank much of his time away, and when he wasn't drinking he didn't do anything much. He fished and told stories to his daughter and ate and slept and fought with his wife, and that was his life.

One day he came home to find his daughter unconscious and his wife gone drinking, and he didn't know who he hated more, himself or his wife. He got his daughter help and then he walked into the sea to escape his wife, or himself, or his hatred, he wasn't sure which.

He got wet and he got sober and he got wise, and he went back to land for his daughter's sake.

That's where Circus's story ends, but it's not where Syracuse's story begins.

\---

Once upon a time a man called Syracuse fished a woman from the water, and she was dead, and then she wasn't.

When he asked her name, she called herself Ondine.

"What's it mean?"  
"She came from the water."  
"Ondine means 'she came from the water'?"  
"No. Ondine was the girl who came from the water."

Ioana drowned in the Irish Sea, and that's where Ondine came to life.

-

They say that selkie myths come from Spaniard sailors, with their hair the color of seal skins; or from Saami women who wear sealskin clothes and sail in sealskin kayaks; or from a wish that loved ones lost at sea might be reborn into a new form, and might even come back.

Annie reads all of these stories in her books, but she doesn't believe in any of them.

They say that a selkie woman will fall in love with a landsman and decide to stay with him as his wife, or that a landsman will fall in love with a selkie woman and steal her coat so that she will stay with him as his wife. They say she will stay with him for seven years and seven tears, and then she must return to sea, stealing her coat back from him. And then she can never return to the life she knew on land.

Annie reads all these stories, too, and believes all of them.

-

Here is another story:

Ondine's life ws swimming and fishing and bathing on the rocks. She had a husband, and she must have loved him once, but she didn't remember why anymore. She watched the humans on their boats and on land, and she dreamed, and she wished.

She watched a man who rarely smiled, and went out on his boat every day, and never seemed at ease in his own skin.

And one day she took a chance and shed her skin for the first time, and let herself be caught in his net.

Seven years and seven tears couldn't be even half enough, but better half than nothing at all.

\---

He says, "How long are you planning to stay?"  
"Depends, I guess."  
"On what?"  
"On you," she says, and watches to see how he reacts.  
He says, "If it depends on me, you can stay forever. Happily ever after. Once upon a time."

But this isn't a fairytale.

\---

A man comes to the island, and maybe he is a Romanian pește called Vladic, and maybe he is a seal-man wearing the shape of a human, and maybe he is both, but Ioana is afraid of him and so is Ondine.

She hides as long as she can, and when she can hide no longer she wears her visibility like armor.

She doesn't want to leave this life, to go back to the life of a drug mule or to go back to the sea, and she doesn't want him at all, if she ever did.

Annie believes she is magic, and maybe Syracuse does too, because he tells her to make a wish.

"I wish Annie wasn't sick," she says, and means it.

"I wish you would stay," he says, and maybe he means it too.

But she is afraid.

\---

The first wish comes true in a wreck of metal and smears of blood, and she is more afraid than ever, which is why she makes the third wish:

"I wish you were dead," she says to Vladic, or to her seal-husband, or to both. Does it matter?

\---

"Sing me the song you sang to the fish."  
"I can't."  
"Why not?"  
"You're drunk."  
"I'll be sober in the morning. You can sing to me then."

And for the first time, she is as afraid of him as she is of anyone else.

He leaves her there on the rocks with nothing and no one, and not even the chance to say goodbye.

\---

Ondine looks to Seal Rock and sees her own kind, even if she's buried her seal coat, can no longer rejoin them.

Ioana looks to Seal Rock and hears Annie's stories and Syracuse's heartless words, "your kind and mine aren't meant to be together".

She swims.

Dying alone frightens her more than anything else.

\---

He comes back for her the next day, when she's already given herself up for dead, and brings her back to life once again, and in exchange she tells him her stories, both of them, Ondine and Ioana both, and if she isn't sure anymore which one's the real truth, well, stories get blurry.

He takes her home.

Everything goes to hell, and for a few moments Ioana's is the only story that matters -- at least until her third wish comes true, and they both taste freedom and, for the first time, believe in it.

\---

Here is one last story:

Syracuse and Ioana get married, to make her a national or because they love each other or because he made a wish for her to stay or all of the above, and they build a life together in cottages and on boats, with each other and with Annie, who flourishes. They have a daughter called Maire, and Ioana teaches her to swim and Syracuse teaches her to fish and Annie teaches her stories.

And sometimes people call her Ioana and sometimes people call her Ondine and sometimes, when they think she can't hear, they call her Circus's water baby or the seal-woman Syracuse brought to life, and she answers all the same.

Seven years after she knelt in the dirt with Annie to bury a seal-coat or a bag of heroin, she dies for the third and final time. Her body is cremated and they scatter her ashes in the Irish Sea.

Syracuse is stoic. Maire doesn't understand.

Annie says, "But she's not really dead, Da, you know? She just couldn't stay. Seven years and seven tears -- she had to go back to the water."

This isn't a fairytale. There's no happily ever after.

But one way or another, every story is true, and everyone chooses their own ending.


End file.
